Masters of cinema

"Clint Eastwood (USA, b. 1930) is a veteran among the grand masters
of contemporary American cinema, whose rise through the system took
a highly unusual form. After playing iconic roles in Sergio Leone's
spaghetti westerns of the 1960s, he returned to Hollywood and
underwent a controversial reincarnation as the ultraviolent cop
Harry. In the 1970s Eastwood began to direct and,in the style of
the great directors of the past, made masterpieces in genres
ranging from the western (""Unforgiven"", 1...

Welles began his direting career in 1940, at the age of
twenty-five, with Citizen Kane, an undisputed, ground-breaking
masterpiece of cinema history. Welles' satture as a baroque,
impetuous and profoundly free artist made the sudios uncomfortable.
He had control of every detail on the twelve feature films he was
able to make, including Lady from Shanghai with Rita Hayworth
(1947), Touch of Evil with Charlton Heston (1958), adaptations of
Shakespeare's plays including Macbeth (1948), Othello (19...

Ingmar Bergman (Sweden, 1918-2007) is, in the world of cinema, a
giant whose stature is comparable to that of Beethoven or
Dostoyevsky. He made around fifty feature films that caught the
spirit of his times, while endlessly reworking his private
obsessions and anguish in the face of a silent God. In Summer with
Monika (1953), Harriet Andersson plays a scandalously
unconventional and sensual young woman, a breath of freedom
epitomizing a new modernity in film. The 1960s saw Bergman in
experiment...

"Federico Fellini (Italy, 1920-1993) is a major figure in the
history of cinema, who created his own highly personal and baroque
cinematic language. He had his first major success in 1954 with
""La Strada"", in which his wife and favourite actress Giulietta
Masina plays the unforgettable Gelsomina, an innocent clown who
falls prey to the violence of the post-war period. With ""La Dolce
Vita of 1960"", Fellini turned his attention to modern life and the
scene in which Marcello Mastroianni and An...

"Pedro Almodovar (Spain, b. 1951) single-handedly represents the
revival of Spanish cinema as part of the cultural flowering of the
Movida Madrilena in the 1980s. New York was first to hail the
unbridled imagination of this provocative director, whose films are
filled with transsexuals, neurotics (""Women on the Verge of a
Nervous Breakdown"", 1988) and even drug-addicted nuns (""The Law
of Desire"", 1987). In his maturity, Almodovar has continued to
draw inspiration from his underprivileged ch...

"Martin Scorsese (USA, b. 1942) is among the most prolific of
American directors, having made more than 25 features in a 40-year
career that has seen him garner all the highest honours the film
world can bestow. Since the success of ""Taxi Driver"" in 1976,
which also marked the start of his long collaboration with Robert
De Niro, he has continued to draw endless inspiration from his
Italian-American roots in films such as ""Goodfellas"" (1990) and
""Casino"" (1995). A cinephile director with a...

"David Lynch (USA, b. 1946) is perhaps the best known of all cult
directors, whose Mulholland Drive marks cinema's arrival to the
21st century. His career began more than 30 years ago, with the
groundbreaking, mystifying ""Eraserhead"" (1977). With ""Blue
Velvet"" (1986), ""Wild at Heart"" (1990) and ""Lost Highway""
(1997) Lynch breathed new life into the sensory experiences of film
audiences and disrupted narrative logic to mysterious and
mystifying effect. In the early 1990s, he invented a n...

Charlie Chaplin (UK, 1889-Switzerland, 1977) is one of cinema's
mythical figures, while the character he played so often has become
an icon. After a childhood in Dickensian London and early work on
the stage, it was his move to Hollywood that enabled him to express
his rich talent to the maximum, becoming the undisputed master of
the burlesque genre in its golden age. His best known feature
films, including City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936) and The
Great Dictator (1940), were made in the ...

"Steven Spielberg (USA, born 1946) was the boy wonder of the new
Hollywood of the 1970s. Taking Orson Welles as his model, he made
Duel aged only 25, following it up with a string of successes that
brought him the adulation of the studios. As a fan of special
effects, and entirely attuned to the shift towards younger film
audiences, he took entertainment to new heights with films such as
""Jaws"" (1975), ""Close Encounters of the Third Kind"" (1977),
""ET"" (1982) and ""Jurassic Park"" (1993). ...

"Stanley Kubrick (USA, 1928-99) was a master who took the art of
filmmaking further than any other contemporary director, a creative
perfectionist whose work now fascinates new generations. He started
out as a photographer before moving into film noir aged barely 25,
after which the power and originality of his work soon brought him
box-office success. In the 1960s, he lived and worked in London,
away from the scandal caused by his adaptation of Lolita (1962) and
from the major studios, from wh...

"Tim Burton (USA, b. 1958) is the youngest of Hollywood's most
successful directors. He has the knack of making films with a very
broad appeal, taking the silliness out of the representation of
children, while remaining in touch with the child within himself
and his audiences. Burton emerged as a director and storyteller
after working as an animator for Disney. His meeting with Johnny
Depp enabled him to give physical form to the heroes of his
imaginary worlds, where fear is mixed with laughter...

"Billy Wilder (USA, 1906-2002) is an undisputed master of American
comedy, taking situation comedy to the edge of the absurd in ""Some
Like it Hot"" (1959). But he also made pessimistic melodramas such
as ""Sunset Boulevard"" (1950), in which Gloria Swanson gives a
moving performance as a fallen star, and a few fine examples of
film noir, such as ""Double Indemnity"" (1944) et ""Witness for the
Prosecution"" (1957). Wilder worked with the greatest stars and his
filmography is studded with class...

"Woody Allen (USA, b. 1935) has been a major comic director since
the 1970s. Writer, director and actor, his self-portrayal as a
neurotic, intellectual, sex-obsessed, Jewish New Yorker seeking
comfort in psychoanalysis brought him immense popular success and
acknowledged status as a writer (""Manhattan"", 1979; and
""Deconstructing Harry"", 1997). In the 2000s, he left New York to
work in Europe, winning over a new audience with fresh inspiration
and young actors, including Scarlett Johansson i...

"Francis Ford Coppola (USA, b. 1939) is the oldest of the
generation of 'movie brats', including Scorsese and Spielberg, who
breathed new life into the Hollywood of the 1970s. He revived the
glory of the studio age with the legendary ""Godfather"" saga
(1972-90), explored the soul of America at war in Vietnam with
""Apocalypse Now"" (1979) and has directed some of the greatest
actors, including Brando, Pacino and De Niro. Having outgrown the
role of director decreed by the major studios, he is ...

The Stanley Kubrick Archives (Bibliotheca Universalis) - Alison Castle In 1968, when Stanley Kubrick was asked to comment on the metaphysical significance of 2001: A Space Odyssey, he replied: “It’s not a message I ever intended to convey in words. 2001 is a nonverbal experience… I tried to create a visual experience, one that directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content.” Now available as part of our Bibliotheca Universalis series, The Stanley Kubrick Archives...